A trans-identified male who works for a UK-based charity to provide “diversity training” has been honored with the Outstanding Female LGBTQIA+ Champion 2023 award. Katie Neeves, formerly Martin, has previously prompted criticism for stating during a training session that he used to steal his sister’s underwear.
The Outstanding Female LGBTQIA+ Champion award given to Neeves was presented at the at the East and West Midlands Women’s Awards on September 22. According to its official website, the purpose of the Women’s Awards is “to raise awareness, recognize and honor the hard work and valuable contribution women of all cultures, communities, races, and beliefs, in all sectors make.” Among the event’s sponsors are Loughborough University and the University of Leicester School of Business.
In social media posts where Neeves shared the news, he also boasted about several other awards he’d received in the past twelve months.
“It’s been the most amazing year for me, as in the last 12 months I have won the British Diversity Awards Hero of the Year 2023, the Trans in the City Trans Community Champion Award 2022 and the This is Us Awards Training & Development Award 2023. Also, I was listed on the DIVA Power List 2023, I was a DIVA Awards Unsung Hero of the Year Finalist 2023 and I was named as a LinkedIn Top Voice as well as becoming a co-presenter of BBC Sounds series ‘Time for some LGBTea,’” Neeves wrote.
Neeves began to identify as a “woman” in 2018 at the age of 48, and soon after started to promote himself as a “trans ambassador” via his Youtube channel, Cool2BTrans, and through his blog of the same name.
Prior to launching Cool2BTrans, Neeves had worked as a professional photographer and, according to Leicester Live, had “photographed the Queen at Buckingham Palace, covered wars and attended Princess Diana’s funeral for IPC magazines.”
Neeves announced his new identity very publicly and created a series of videos that he sent to all of his photography clients. In one video, Neeves describes how he began crossdressing as a fetish and “envied the girls,” but began to “embrace” it as a “hobby” during his twenties.
He explains that he was first able to “admit” to himself that he is actually a woman after speaking with a “clairvoyant” who consulted with a “spirit.” He also describes the manner in which he intended to “go full-time” as female.
“My transition is going to be very public, very bold, and very out there. No apologies for that. I’ll be starting on HRT soon, which should start to give me the feminine curves that I would like, and I need, in order to be happy,” said Neeves at the time.
“It’s a slow progress, so I’m not going to all of a sudden be turning up with massive, great big double-E breasts,” he says, laughing. “Hopefully the HRT will reverse some of my male-pattern baldness. I really hope it does. It’s something I’m very worried about.”
Neeves has on several occasions elaborated on how his cross-dressing fetish led him to pursue a transgender identity. In an interview announcing his self-declared identity, Neeves told Leicester Live, “My earliest memory is when I was about three, I preferred to wear my sister’s knickers, not realizing this was anything to bother about – until mum found out and chastised me.
“I still kept borrowing my sister’s clothes (and my girlfriend’s), in secret though, all through until my early 20s,” Neeves added. The interview describes Neeves as having “soft skin” as a result of taking female hormones, and as “a naturally slightly-built person” with “an enviable figure.”
Last year, one woman who attended a training session hosted by Neeves leaked video clips of him discussing instances in which he had stolen his sister’s underwear in his youth. Sarah Summers explained that the webinar was delivered to “a large, London-based corporation as part of LGBT history month.”
In the leaked video clips, Neeves could be heard saying, “In my childhood, I used to secretly dress in my sister’s clothes whenever I had the opportunity. And whenever I did it, it felt so right. But then those feelings of being right were very quickly overtaken by feelings of guilt, shame, and self-loathing. Because what I was doing was wrong, it was dirty, it was naughty, and not what respectable people did.”
Neeves also told the employees during the diversity training webinar that he was a lesbian woman.
“In my case, I’ve always been attracted to women, and I still am. It’s been one of the constants in my life. It’s just that for me, the labels changed. Previously, I was labeled as a heterosexual man, now I’m labeled as a lesbian.”
Identifying as a lesbian, Neeves suggests, caused a rift in his marriage: “As for my wife, her label hadn’t changed,” he said.
Neeves had previously disclosed how his relationship with his wife deteriorated as a result of his sexual fetish. Speaking with Leicester Live, he describes the moment he confessed to his wife while watching a television program about a woman whose husband was a cross-dresser: “My wife at the time said jokingly, you’d never do that to me would you? I said, ‘well actually, I do’ … We patched it over and managed 13 years together but it was always there, and we finally divorced,” said Neeves.
In recent years, Neeves has repeatedly mentioned his cross-dressing history and the theft of his sister’s underwear. In 2021, he told DIVA, a publication aimed at lesbians, that his “need” to cross-dress had manifested as young as his childhood.
“I remember around the age of four I was caught trying on my sisters clothes and when I did it, I felt right. But when my mum caught me she told me off. For the next week, every day she would pull my shorts down to check if I had them on and it was very humiliating,” he said.
In a video Neeves shared in 2019 titled “Losing Family & Friends for Being Transgender,” he discusses how his sister has refused to accept his self-declared female identity. He then reads aloud a letter he sent to his sister which states that he is “sad” that she “doesn’t accept” his transgender status.
The letter continues with Neeves telling his sister that if he hadn’t been able to identify as a woman, he “likely” would have “spiraled into depression.”
“That’s why the trans suicide rate is so high,” Neeves says. He then lists off statistics put forward in 2012 by UK charity Stonewall which claim that 48% of trans-identified people have attempted suicide. The findings of the report have been criticized for its sample size of just 27 individuals.
In 2020, Neeves published an open letter to J.K. Rowling in response to her essay expressing concern at the clash between gender ideology and women’s rights. He accused the renowned author of “peddling anti-trans misinformation” and made an unfounded claim that her “diatribe directly caused some trans children to self-harm and others to attempt suicide.”
Neeves has spoken at Leicester College in the past, and last March a webinar hosted by Neeves and platformed by the Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion, sold tickets at the price of £63.22 per person.
Neeves has also publicly campaigned against the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for its stance that gender identity presents a conflict to women’s sex-based rights. In February last year, he shared a petition created by Stonewall which declared that “the EHRC is not fit for purpose.”
The month prior, the EHRC had told the Scottish government that proposed reforms that allow for a self-declaration of sex do not adequately take into account the rights of women.
Earlier this month, Neeves delivered an 8-part “trans awareness session” at Leicestershire Partnership National Health Service Trust, in which he taught public hospital staff that biological sex existed on a spectrum.